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Death Doesn't End Rule of Kim Il Sung, 'Eternal President'

North Korea announced today that it had revised its Constitution to make its late ''Great Leader,'' Kim Il Sung, the country's ''eternal President.''

Adjusting to the inconvenience of having a President who died four years ago and is thus unable to make speeches, the Supreme People's Assembly listened soberly to a tape recording of an address by President Kim delivered in 1990.

The upshot of the announcement is that, as expected, President Kim's son Kim Jong Il -- the country's longtime ''Dear Leader'' -- will in effect be head of state, based on his position as chairman of the National Defense Commission. It is not clear how much it will matter that North Korea does not have a living President, for it has already gotten by with a vacant presidency in the four years since Kim Il Sung died.

There is no doubt that Kim Jong Il controls North Korea firmly and that he could have had the presidency if he had wanted it. But scholars cite two reasons why he may have preferred to let his late father retain the post.

The first is simply to show respect and filial piety to the man who founded North Korea half a century ago and ruled it virtually as a god ever since. Though he was often condemned as a dictator in the West, Kim Il Sung seems to have been revered by many North Koreans, as even defectors usually acknowledge.

''Kim Jong Il needs his father, needs to wear his father's jacket,'' said Han S. Park, a scholar of North Korea at the University of Georgia. Mr. Park said that in time Kim Jong Il may gradually emerge and rule more openly on his own.

The second reason Mr. Kim may have been reluctant to take on the presidency is that it would make him a far more public figure and would oblige him to meet ambassadors and foreign visitors. He has always been an intensely private figure, a man who virtually never travels or meets foreign visitors.

Under the new Constitution, the tasks of receiving ambassadors and representing the state for diplomatic purposes will be taken over by the president of the presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly, the legislature. The president of that presidium will be Kim Yong Nam, the previous Foreign Minister.

Kim Yong Nam, who is not related to Kim Jong Il, is now ranked No. 2 in North Korea's hierarchy.

It is not clear why Kim Jong Il is so reluctant to meet foreigners and appear in public. But a top North Korean official who defected to the South, Hwang Jang Yop, has said Mr. Kim believes that he derives some charisma or power from the air of mystery that surrounds him.

North Koreans are expected to continue to focus their cult of personality on the father, whose face continues to adorn the badges worn by nearly every adult North Korean. But the son is also now referred to as ''Great Leader'' -- although the Korean phrase used for the son is different from the one reserved for the father -- and the North Korean authorities are hailing his rise to head of state as a major national triumph.

The official Korean Central News Agency today called it ''a historic event and great jubilee of the nation which gives a definite guarantee for certain victory in the revolutionary struggle of the Korean people.''

South Korea, for its part, urged Mr. Kim to be ''responsible'' and to stop building up his country's armed forces at a time when many North Koreans are starving.